About Malala

Malala Yousafzai was born in 1998 and given the first name Malala after Malalai of Maiwand, a Pashtun poet and warrior woman. Her last name belongs to the Yousufzai, a large Pashtun tribal confederation that is predominant in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where she grew up. At her house in Mingora, she lived with her two younger brothers, her parents, and two pet chickens.

She is a school student from the town of Mingora in Swat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwestern Pakistan. She is known for her education and women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Tehrik-i-Taliban regime had banned girls from attending school in early 2009. During that period, at the age of 11, Yousafzai came to prominence through a blog she wrote for the BBC detailing her life under the Taliban regime, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls. Later that year, the Pakistani military intervened, culminating in the expulsion of the Taliban from the Swat Valley. Malala Yousafzai has since been nominated for several awards, and has won Pakistan’s first National Peace Prize.

On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by militants gunmen while returning home on a school bus.

The assassination attempt received immediate worldwide media coverage and produced an outpouring of sympathy, along with widespread anger. Protests against the shooting were held in several Pakistani cities the day after the attack. Pakistani officials offered a $105,000 (10 million rupee) reward for information leading to the arrest of the attackers.